Fed. Circ. Debates Eligibility Standards For Software Patents

By Erica Teichert

Law360, Washington (February 8, 2013, 7:28 PM ET) -- An en banc Federal Circuit panel on Friday debated what standards it should use to determine if software and computer-based inventions are unpatentable, questioning how inextricably bound the computer must be to the underlying invention to qualify for patent protection.

The court's desire to set a test for determining whether a computer-implemented invention is patent-eligible arose from CLS Bank International's challenge to Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd.'s computerized trading platform patents, which CLS alleged are too abstract to be patented.